Having had the chance to read an early copy of Lucinda Rosenfeld's new book, CLASS, last weekend, I wanted to be sure to recommend it to you as quickly as possible -- even though you may not be able to get a hold of a copy for a little while longer and despite the fact that I hope to interview Rosenfeld about her novel in the next few days.

[This happens all the time when neighborhoods gentrify, and is so predictable (and often upsetting to many of those involved) that I long ago proposed that it would be smart to change federal education funding to ease the pain for these schools whose poverty rates are plummeting (and also that there should be someone in charge of school gentrification in districts like Chicago, DC, and NYC).]

Of course, there's another school a few blocks over that's already flipped, demographically and otherwise, and is an appealing option for parents who are deeply concerned (or wildly over-anxious) about their offspring's academic and life success.

There's just one catch: the only families that are supposed to send their children to that school are those who live nearby (or used to) or can find some other way of wheedling their way in.

In telling this ripped-from-the-headlines tale, Rosenfeld does a great job detailing the families and feelings that accompany Brooklyn gentrifiers, and the tradeoffs involved in making individual versus collective decisions. There are also some fantastic misunderstandings, hilarious sendups (of Success Academy, among other things), and interesting reflections on what it's like to be white, guilty, anxious, and altruistic in alternating moments.

This is not a deep policy book, or even always entirely serious in terms of how it addresses education issues. But the issues it raises are serious underneath the satire, and the dynamics among parents, teachers, and children seem fairly realistic. Think of it as the guilty pleasure version of Nikole Hannah-Jones' NYT Sunday Magazine piece about how she chose a school for her child, or a schools-focused satire along the lines of The Corrections.

At times, I found myself wishing that Rosenfeld had taken the satire even further, out to the ridiculous edges where Gary Shteyngart and others go, with crossing guards checking children's home addresses as they wave them across the street, but I still found CLASS smart, enjoyable, and easy to recommend for a certain kind of schools-obsessed reader. Maybe you know someone?

It's been a relatively slow Fall season for education books, despite Nicholson Baker's Substitute and Matthew Desmond's Evicted (both of which I recommend).

However, as you may recall having learned earlier this year, New York City writer Lucinda Rosenfeld has a new book coming out in January, titled CLASS, about a hot topic in education right now: white parents choosing neighborhood schools.

As summarized in Kirkus Reviews, the book follows the lives of Karen Kipple and her husband, Matt, both career activists in the nonprofit sector, who "have righteously enrolled their daughter in their zoned public elementary school, where “the white population…hovered around 20 percent.”

Things get awkward pretty quickly: "A scuffle on the playground between a Jayyden and a Maeve further divides the parents along racial lines." A parent tries to fake an address so that she can send her child to a whiter school.

"From its James Baldwin epigraph—“White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live”—to the final pages, in which Karen decides not to inquire about the fate of young Jayyden to avoid appearing “like one of those well-meaning, college-educated white liberals who fetishize the deprivations of the underclass,” this book takes dead aim and doesn’t miss."

News of the book's publication first appeared at a panel Rosenfeld did with Nikole Hannah-Jones and WNYC's Rebecca Carroll discussing voluntary integration efforts on the Upper West Side. The book comes out officially in January.

If you want to try and understand how education writers and editors decide to write the stories that they produce -- and how they come out the way they do -- it's good to know what they're being told. (And if you're a savvy education editor or reporter it's also a good thing to know a little about what you're being told.)

For example, later this week in Chicago is the Education Writers Association's mini-conference on The ABCs of ESSA, in which they association will try and make sure that education reporters know about the new federal law and how it's going to be implemented.

The preliminary schedule of events to be held in Chicago includes appearances from CCSSO's Chris Minnich, LPI's Charmaine Mercer, the Leadership Conference's Liz King, and former EdWeek editor and reporter Erik Robelen (now at EWA). I'm also supposed to be there (as an attendee).

There are also going to be appearances from the USDE's Emma Vadehra, some discussion about low-performing school interventions (including someone from San Francisco's Mission High), and a panel on great ESSA stories led by NPR's Steve Drummond, Chalkbeat's Scott Elliott, and the Joyce Foundation's Stephanie Banchero. AFT head Randi Weingarten was scheduled to be there -- probably the highest-profile person on the original speakers list -- but she's being replaced by staffer Rob Weil.

Anything notable about the list of topics and attendees? Anyone left out? Education journalism didn't do an entirely stellar job describing NCLB to the public. Ditto for Common Core. Crossed fingers that ESSA training and the subsequent coverage are both strong.

Here the New York Times looks back at the rise of zero-tolerance discipline policies, going back to Joe Clark, and then takes us to the current wave of restorative justice programs (featuring Furr High School in Houston).

"The concept of zero tolerance has come to encompass such a broad range of disruptive actions that roughly three million schoolchildren are suspended each year... Many students are hauled off to police station houses for antisocial behavior that, a generation or two ago, would have sent them no farther than the principal’s office."

Watch the video to see Eric Holder talk about high school kids as predators back in the 1990s, and admit that the policies and implementation went way too far. Read the accompanying article here.

The series, part of the Times' Retro Reports series, gives a helpful overview, though I wish it pointed out the struggles that some districts are having transitioning from zero tolerance to restorative practices without additional resources for counselors and teacher training. Eliminating zero tolerance isn't as easy as flipping a switch, and trying to do it without care and planning could lead schools right back to some of the same problems as before.

Just imagine being at a school where you sit down, get your education, you get back up, go home, next thing you know you brought bedbugs from school to your home... Just imagine being at a school where your teachers are all sick and tired, and they’re acting like they’re not able to teach because they’re not getting paid for what they do.

The new HBO series "Insecure" (produced by Comedy Central's Larry Wilmore, among others) opens with the protagonist presenting her nonprofit program ("We Got You All") getting a gentle hazing from a class of middle(?) school students.

One of the opening voiceover lines: "My boss founded a nonprofit to help kids in the hood. But she didn't hire anyone from the hood."

"Roque, Kasey, and Anthony will surprise, inspire, and challenge audiences to rethink stereotypes of homelessness as they work to complete their educations while facing the trauma of being alone and abandoned at an early age." Read more here. From Independent Lens.

After seeing a screening of the film at Scholastic last summer, I wrote that "the most interesting and helpful aspect to the film is how it describes a situation in which there are no black-and-white heroes or villains, and no bright or artificial line between parents, school, and social services agencies tasked with supporting families and children in tough circumstances. It's not the school, or the teacher, or the kid, or society. It's all of them."

Read more about the story behind the film at NJ.com. After screening locally -- perhaps you can view it online? -- it will apparently be offered to national PBS outlets for broadcast later this fall.

Fans of high-quality nonfiction and those concerned about education and segregation should check out Matthew Desmond's pretty amazing book, Evicted, out earlier this year.

Focusing on the lives of poor white and black residents of one midsized city (Milwaukee), but making a national case, Desmond shows why poor people tend to move more often, but largely stay within confined geographic areas.

"There is an enormous amount of pain and poverty in this rich land,’ argues American sociologist Desmond in this brilliant book about housing and the lives of eight families in Milwaukee. (Via The Guardian)

The educational impacts of children whose families are moving frequently aren't the focus of the book, but they're ever-present: Lost sleep, changes of schools, going hungry, lack of heat or electricity, and constant worry. Families with children are much more likely to be evicted, notes this Mother Jones article.

The book also shows how academics and policymakers have missed much of what's going on by focusing on relatively small parts of the problem (federal housing vouchers and public housing) rather than larger ones (the private market) most poor renters inhabit.

Last but not least, Evicted shows that it's not just slumlords who are culpable for the deplorable, exploitative situation. The legal system, law enforcement, and even social support agencies all play a role in creating and perpetuating things -- and tolerating what's clearly intolerable.

Listen to this new hourlong audio documentary from APM Reports (formerly known as American RadioWorks, about "what kids are up against at the growing number of high-poverty schools in America." And look forward to a September 20 event in DC.

Chicago Public Radio's Becky Vevea has a long piece about what happened when two principals and some parents come up with a plan to merge an overcrowded high-performing school (with relatively large numbers of white kids) with an under-enrolled lower-performing school (mostly serving kids of color).

It isn't pretty, but it's fascinating and important -- especially the voices and viewpoints of the parents who currently send their children to the two schools.

Lots of folks seem to have tuned into the premier episode of Vice Principals last weekend, at least according to the number of writeups I've come across in the last few days.

Over at Vox, the show is described as "a vicious free-for-all" focused on helping the rest of us understand why white guys are well, so angry. They're also tired, and bored, and sexist/racist: "If you’re cool watching two slacker white dudes fight to take down a completely competent black woman, then you’ll love Vice Principals."

This recent New Yorker article (There Goes the Neighborhood) raises a bunch of important questions about how we think about gentrification and low-income communities that used to be commonly called "ghettos" -- and, by extension, low-income (generally low-performing) schools.

Scholars have long been sympathetic towards these communities, according to the piece:

"Scholars who studied the ghetto tended to be motivated by sympathy for its residents, which often resulted in a complicated sort of sympathy for ghettos themselves."

It could be argued that some of the same emotions have been on display when it comes to the low-income, generally low-performing school.

However public opinion has changed dramatically.

"Where the ghetto once seemed a menace, threatening to swallow the city like an encroaching desert, now it often appears, in scholarly articles and the popular press, as an endangered habitat."

The reality may be, however, that displacements from gentrification are not be as widespread as is commonly thought. That's because underlying mobility rates are already relatively high in these communities, as evictions, better opportunities, and other shifts move families in and out of low-income areas.

In addition, "Gentrification needn’t be zero-sum, because gentrifying neighborhoods may become more densely populated, with new arrivals adding to, rather than supplanting, those currently resident.

Like many white people, my only experience of institutions was majority white. And so there was a learning curve for me. I was a little uncomfortable the first day of kindergarten. I saw black families – I didn’t see individuals. I saw Hispanic families … It took me a while to see past race, in a way, if that makes any sense, and to see that these were potential friends for me, these were potential allies, mom friends.

- Brooklyn parent and author Lucinda Rosenfeld, talking with WNYC's Rebecca Caroll and the NYT's Nikole Hannah-Jones at a recent panel on school segregation (What role should parents play in promoting integration?). Rosenfeld's next novel, about a white mom choosing a majority-minority school for her child, comes out early next year.

Lucinda Rosenfeld's new novel, Class, is scheduled to come out in a few months, but we're already starting to hear about it this summer.

According to the Amazon blurb, the book focuses on "idealistic forty-something Karen Kipple" who sends her kid to an integrated Brooklyn school.

"But when a troubled student from a nearby housing project begins bullying children in Ruby's class, the distant social and economic issues Karen has always claimed to care about so passionately feel uncomfortably close to home."

"We’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil."

So I urge you A, to stop talking to the press... This is a private matter, I think, from our community. This story doesn't exist without your quotes... Be mindful of when you speak, if you're going to speak to the press, because slandering or saying anything negative about this teaching staff is wrong... Conversely, painting any opposition as classist or racist is about as bad as it can get.

Today and tomorrow, the NYT is gathering EdSec John King, Carmen Farina, Pasi Sahlberg, Angela "Grit" Duckworth, and others for its annual education conference. Times journalists including Kate Zernike and Nikole Hannah-Jones are scheduled to participate.

"The New York Times will bring together the most influential leaders in higher education – including presidents, provosts, chancellors and other decision-makers at colleges and universities ... to explore and assess the most pressing issues on campuses today."

As you can probably tell, the event is focused on higher education and called the Higher Ed Leaders Forum. The issues highlighted in the promo materials include "diversity and free-speech dilemmas, the STEM-humanities debate, sexual assault, the digital future, the crisis in public funding of education and much more."

Check out the schedule here. Far as I can tell, there's no livestream.

In case you missed it, here's my roundup of last week's best education journalism. It comes out every Friday over at THE GRADE, where I write about education coverage. You can also get it via email by sending me an email at alexanderusso@gmail with "subscribe" in the headline.

There's a big Equity Matters Symposium being held tomorrow at the Ford Foundation offices in NYC, and while invitations are limited to journalists you can apparently watch via livestream here.

Some of the speakers include Gloria Ladson-Billings, Sean Reardon, and Richard Rothstein.

Some of the Equity Project journalists who will talk about their projects include Alejandra Lagos, Zaidee Stavely, Kristina Rizga, and Patrick Wall. Cara Fitzpatrick, will also be there. Spencer Fellowship head LynNell Hancock, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Keith Woods are also scheduled to attend.

You can find the full list of Speakers and the Schedule of events by clicking the links.

What's it all about? According to the promo materials, the Equity Matters event "will bring together the nation’s top experts and education journalists in examining the root causes and impact of our nation’s ever-widening “opportunity gap.”

Funded by the Ford Foundation (with whom I've discussed supporting THE GRADE), the Equity Project is part of a broader SF-based initiative called RenaissanceJournalism, which sponsors "national initiatives that support journalists and their news organizations to produce ambitious, in-depth and compelling stories that reveal and illuminate social injustice and inequity."

Some examples of work funded in part by the Renaissance Journalism project include the Detroit Journalism Collaborative's seven-part series on race and poverty. Click here for the full list.

This isn't the first such gathering. There was an event in San Francisco not too long ago featuring Rizga, Pirette McKamey and Robert Roth.

These aren't the only fellowships for education journalists. Others include the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship (which I received in 2009), new EWA Fellowships, the Teacher Project fellowships (whose work appears in Slate).

The most interesting moment might be the 55:00 minute mark, where Lisa Snell and Roland Martin discuss a failed NOLA mobilization effort. The Seventy Four contributor Cynthia Tucker Haynes is the moderator. Watch all NSVF Summit videos here. Which one should I watch/show next?

From PBS NewsHour: "When other cities have proposed a tax on sugary soft drinks, it’s often sold as a plan to fight obesity. Not in Philadelphia, where a battle is brewing over the mayor’s 3 cents-per-ounce tax plan that would be used to fund citywide pre-K. The beverage industry opposes the tax and argues that if you’re going to tax them, then why not cakes and candy?"

I'm not exactly sure what the news hook was here - Teacher Appreciation Week, maybe? -- but here's a May 3rd Vox video of former education reporter Dana Goldstein (now at The Marshall Project) talking about outsized demands the public and policymakers demand of teachers, rhetorically at least.

There are certainly examples of teachers being called on to do superhuman work, or denounced for the failures of a handful. But the rhetoric certainly goes both ways (hero and villain), and I'm not sure that these extremes are taken very seriously by policymakers or the public.

There may be some cumulative effect of the repeated assertion, however -- and the unfortunate effect of silencing pragmatic debate over improving teaching.

"At the second annual Education Summit, The Atlantic will illuminate the most pressing debates in the education world today, from cradle to college," says the promo copy for Education Summit 2016. It start tomorrow morning and continues Wednesday, in DC. Topics under discussed are listed as ESSA, Common Core, School to Prison Pipeline, Speech on College Campuses, and College Affordability. Speakers and panelists include Jen Holleran, executive director of Startup:Education (part of the Chan Zuckerberg effort). The Atlantic's education editor, Alia Wong, will also participate. Hashtag? Livestream? LMK.

The 69th Education Writers Association National Seminar is taking place starting Sunday, and all your favorite education journalists are scheduled to be there: members of the NPR education team, the NYT's Peabody-winning Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Tampa Bay Times' Pulitzer-winning Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner, the the NYT's Kate Zernike, WSJ's Leslie Brody, etc. Plus there will be many big-name policy wonks and education leaders, such as Boston superintendent Tommy Chang, Stanford's Sean Reardon, UPenn's Angela Duckworth, the AFT's Randi Weingarten, MA's Mitch Chester, and EdSec John King.

The vast majority of the upcoming EWA annual conference in Boston starting this weekend is dedicated to helping journalists understand hot topics in education. There's an app. There's a print program. There are "lightning talks." There's a hashtag: #EWA16.

But there are also a slew of few panels and events focused on education journalism itself, including of course the annual EWA awards. The first morning of the conference is focused on journalists describing how they reported a challenging topic, using data, adding audio, and getting access. The afternoon session includes journalists like Kristina Rizga and Dale Russakoff talking about their book-length projects. Some of the "Lightning Talks" -- 5 Mistakes Journos Make When Covering Ed Research, How to Really Talk with Boys from Diverse Backgrounds, Maximizing Digital Media for Reporting -- focus on the tools of the trade.

The only topics missing that I can see are writing for social media (Snapchat, Facebook Live) and using images and graphics.

Teachers and education reporters have lots in common, notes EWA head Caroline Hendrie in the program introduction: "In both education and journalism, interest in addressing inequality and injustice – social, economic, and institutional – is on the rise. Both educators and members of the news media face demands for greater fairness from the communities affected by their work. Concern about inculcating cultural competence in both educators and reporters is keen. How to diversify both fields’ workforces remains a stubborn problem. At the same time, the two sectors are struggling to meet ever-changing standards of quality. After all, both fields are traversing periods of transformation, as new technologies and standards of excellence continuously redefine success."

Another notable angle: For the first time in recent memory, the EWA award winners will be announced at this event -- after the Peabody and Pulitzer awards have already been named. For background on the finalists, read Hits, Misses, Snubs, & Mysteries.

Who funds all this? Well, the event is co-sponsored with BU's Communications and Education Schools, and the sponsor page includes the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Raikes, Wallace, Walton, Hewlett, Nellie Mae, American Federation of Teachers, Pearson, College Board, Edwin Gould, Gates, National Education Association, Secure Schools Alliance, American Institutes for Research, and Scholastic. Programming for new reporters comes from Spencer and the W.T. Grant Foundation.

According to the website, discussants will include education historian and NYU Steinhardt research professor Diane Ravitch; and union leaders Lily Eskelsen García of the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.

The new season of PBS's POV series "Seek Redemption, Justice, Peace" starts in May and features at least one segment "All The Difference" focused on the struggles of two South Side Chicago teens named Robert and Krishaun who are trying to graduate high school and go on to college. The piece "follows the young men through five years of hard work, sacrifice, setbacks and uncertainty." Watch the trailer above. Look for it in September.

"The NAACP considered using her case to challenge the segregation laws, but ultimately decided against it for several reasons: 1. They thought she was too young to be the face of their movement. 2. She got pregnant right around the time of her arrest and they thought it would attract too much negative attention." (The 15-Year-Old Schoolgirl Who Paved the Way for Rosa Parks)